


Bath time

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [13]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21588157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: Everybody gets cleaned up and Sigrun and Emil set off on another scavenging run.
Series: Mikkel's Story [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Kudos: 7





	Bath time

Tuuri took the first bath in their primitive tub (a large basin) with Sigrun standing guard, Mikkel and Emil chopping wood, well-separated at Mikkel's insistence, and Lalli prowling around keeping an eye out for grosslings. With Tuuri safely in the tank, Sigrun took her own bath, followed by Emil while Mikkel finished up provisioning the tank. Mikkel then had to order Emil out, discovered that the water heater was completely empty, and resumed chopping wood until there was hot water for his own bath.

"Tuuri, tell Lalli it's his turn."

Much Finnish back and forth. "Um, he says he won't. He says he smells right for the forest."

"But we're not going to be _in_ the forest. Tell him —" Mikkel stopped himself. Telling Lalli that if he didn't bathe he'd have to sleep outside would probably encourage him in his intransigence. "Tell him if he'll bathe I'll give him a cookie."

More Finnish. "Okay, he'll do it. But, uh, you'd better hurry before he changes his mind."

With Mikkel giving instructions and Tuuri beside him translating with her back to Lalli, the deed was done. Lalli obediently if unenthusiastically washed his hair, scrubbed behind his ears, and submitted resentfully to having a bucket of warm water dumped over his head to rinse him. In the end, Mikkel not only gave him a cookie, but gave Tuuri one too in gratitude. His stash was oddly low and he supposed he had miscounted.

By the time everyone was dressed in their only change of clothes and Mikkel had all their laundry together, it had begun to drizzle. Sigrun glared at Mikkel accusingly. "It would have rained even if we hadn't bathed," he pointed out mildly, making her sigh deeply through her nose and turn away.

The rain was coming down harder and the Sun still had not showed itself above the horizon. Bundled up in her winter coat and wearing her protective mask, Tuuri was taking some time to carefully transcribe the log which Mikkel had found so interesting. She and Mikkel had agreed that that particular book might well not survive being hauled around in the back of the tank.

Tuuri gasped in shock as half a page came away in her hand despite her delicate touch and Mikkel, passing by, hastened to reassure her, "That's ... all right. As long as we can still read it —"

"Wait, what?" Sigrun interrupted from behind him, "Nobody told me we had to _read_ any books!"

" _We_ don't," he answered patiently. "I asked Tuuri to make a transcript of one of them for me."

"Sooo," Sigrun drawled, "you're gonna just read stuff ... _voluntarily_ , is what you're saying?"

"It's _one book_ that I happen to find particularly interesting," he replied rather less patiently.

"Whoa, hey! No judgement here! To each his own, you know?"

Mikkel didn't answer. He had work to do and it didn't include arguing with illiterate Norwegians.

* * *

At dawn, Tuuri moved the tank a couple of miles closer to the next scavenging site; the new location was less secure but there had been no noise to attract grosslings there. As even Sigrun had seen that Lalli was less helpful than she'd hoped in scavenging for books, she readily agreed with Mikkel that the scout should be left behind to sleep off his exertions of the night before. She didn't offer, and Mikkel didn't ask, that Mikkel himself join the scavengers, so she and Emil left together in a brief break in the rain.

" _Please_ try to be selective and not bring back too much trash," Mikkel called after them. Sigrun's casual "Okie-dokie" didn't fill him with confidence.

Tuuri waved goodbye and turned back at her typewriter, Lalli crawled under Mikkel's bunk to sleep, and Mikkel began the tedious process of scrubbing clothing and bedding. It was fortunate that heat from the engine could be diverted to dry the wash, because it certainly would never dry if hung up in this dampness. Their new team member, Reynir, was somewhere inside, out of Mikkel's way.

"Um ..." Mikkel heard Tuuri's voice after an hour or so. "Is there anything I can help you with?" She was speaking Icelandic, so addressing Reynir rather than Lalli.

"No, actually. Is there anything _I_ can help _you_ with? I can be helpful, I promise!"

The rapid clatter of the typewriter stopped entirely. "Thanks, but ... maybe later? I don't think I need any help. Right — right now, you know?"

"But I wouldn't need any fancy tasks!" The Icelander was almost begging. "I was thinking I could do things like sweep the floors or dust the ... walls? Or organize papers! I see you have _lots_ of papers!"

"No, really I —"

Mikkel wondered if he should intervene. Perhaps it was like introducing a new dog, though; you had to let them work out their relationship by themselves, or you'd be sorting things out _for_ them forever.

"Aww, how _cute!_ Is this a picture of you and your brothers?"

The picture, Mikkel knew, was one of the few things which Tuuri had brought with her, and was set up next to her typewriter.

"Uhh, yes. Or, no. The big one's my brother. Lalli is my cous—"

"Ah, I know! I could help you by fixing the broken frame!"

Pausing to listen, Mikkel wondered how he planned to do _that_ with the glass cover broken.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have promised that. I can't fix glass. I'm so stupid ..." Mikkel was feeling sorry for the kid. He'd have to find something for him to do ... but not today. Even he was weary from chopping and hauling wood, and now scrubbing the laundry, and he didn't have the energy to train an assistant.

"H - hey," Tuuri stammered, "I just thought of something for you! Could you fetch my bag from the other room? That'd be _great!_ "

"Bag? From over there?" Reynir sounded so eager that it hurt.

"Y - yes, go get it!" It wasn't really a surprise that Reynir's rapid footsteps were immediately followed by the whir of the heavy internal door sliding shut. Mikkel shook his head sadly.

"Hey, I think the door might be closed," Reynir ventured after a moment.

Faintly, "Yeah, I know, the _wind_ blew it shut! A - and it has this weird lock that takes a really long time to wiggle open s - so ..."

She really needed to work on her lying, Mikkel thought as he wrung out one last shirt, hung it up, and climbed into the tank while Reynir answered dejectedly, "Oh. Oooh, I got it. I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry," came faintly from behind the door.

"And _I'm_ sorry to see you wandering around without supervision," Mikkel told the younger man, one large hand on his shoulder turning him around. "You'll stay where I don't have to keep an eye on you, and you might as well get some rest. You clearly didn't sleep well last night." Mikkel, who never slept well himself, had heard the other moaning and thrashing most of the night. "It _is_ very common to have nightmares the first time sleeping in the silent lands."

> Corporal Madsen had three new soldiers fresh from Bornholm. He'd been lucky: none killed in the past month and only three injured seriously enough to have to be evacuated. Those three would not return, he knew. Some injuries you just didn't ever really recover from.
> 
> These new soldiers, though, they were so young ... had he ever been so young? Some days he felt like he'd been fighting grosslings for decades, centuries, even. Actually he'd been in the Army for two years, having joined up when they announced their intention of reclaiming the lost mainland, moved by an impulse which he could not explain even to himself. At twenty-one, he'd been older than the average recruit but not _much_ older; the Army did not accept recruits younger than eighteen, ostensibly so that the recruits would have achieved their full growth before joining. As they accepted only immunes for this expedition, Mikkel suspected that in fact they wanted recruits to have time to marry and produce children, keeping their immune genes in the population even if the worst happened to them. That hadn't worked out for Mikkel himself, a fact that he put down to his looks, rather than his abrasive, somewhat arrogant, personality and a love of practical jokes which could verge on, and sometimes crossed over into, the cruel.
> 
> These three recruits hadn't complained about anything so far, at least not to him. They accepted the tent, which was at least rain- and wind-proof; the cots, which were uncomfortable but kept them up off the dirt floor; and the food, which was nutritious and filling if not tasty or even warm. It could be worse, had been much worse when the army first set foot in abandoned Denmark.
> 
> They didn't complain, but the first night they woke the entire tent repeatedly with screams and moans and weeping. The nightmares were bad, very bad, though none of the three could describe exactly what they'd dreamed.
> 
> Mikkel was patient. He'd been through it himself, the terrifying, looming, shapeless _thing_ that stalked through his dreams, and he'd seen it with every soldier he'd been sent. They'd ... get used to it. If they didn't, if they simply couldn't sleep or let everyone around them sleep, they'd eventually have to be sent back to Bornholm.
> 
> In the end, he only had to send back one of the three. The other two managed to sleep reasonably well until grosslings tore them apart in a breakthrough a month later.

"It's fine," Reynir answered, "I didn't have nightmares. I never do. I don't even dream like — ever."

"Everyone dreams when they sleep. The only difference is whether one remembers their dreams or not." He wondered briefly what Reynir had started to say before breaking off. He didn't dream like ... who? Well, no matter.

"Huh. I didn't know that," the Icelander answered with a puzzled frown. As Mikkel shook out a fresh blanket for him, "Hey, wait, I could help _you!_ That way you'd know where I am _and_ have less work yourself."

Mikkel was tired of dealing with other people, especially this useless Icelander. With Sigrun and Emil out, Tuuri locked away with her book and her typewriter, and Lalli and Reynir sleeping, he could have some _peace!_ He turned and left without answering. "No?" Reynir tried, "Okay, I'll stay here."


End file.
